Church life can get messy quickly. In this episode, Scott Sanders chats with Chris Rooleht about why having a simple serve chart can help bring clarity to ministry, showing who’s doing what, where responsibilities sit, and where people might be carrying too much.
They discuss how serve charts can help churches care for people well, identify gaps in ministry, and plan for the future.
In this episode:
- Why every church should have an serve chart
- How to spot ministry overload and unclear responsibilities
- Practical tools to help you map your teams
- Using serve charts to plan for growth, staffing, and church planting
Toolbox:
Guide to Church Staffing by The Unstack Group Blog Post
Contact Us for More Resources
Credits:
This episode was brought to you by Exdia
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Transcript:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:00:08:09 – 00:00:34:04
Scott Sanders
Yet I am Scott Sanders. Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel centered ministry. Every week today, we talk about the importance of churches needing to have, an org chart. Just just something that maps out, who and what of people who are doing stuff in your church? Not very complicated, but it’s something that a lot of churches don’t have that you may think that, you know, who’s doing one in your church, but do you really?
00:00:34:10 – 00:00:57:02
Scott Sanders
So putting it on paper, getting a chance to actually discuss it with others actually helps put a picture to the reality and actually gives the opportunity for you to ask a whole bunch of questions that we’re gonna dive in today. And so for this conversation, I’m joined by Chris Roulette. Thanks. Looks after our consulting, teams across the Rich Australia network.
00:00:57:04 – 00:01:10:17
Scott Sanders
This is going to be your first time on the show, so I’m really looking forward to, hearing more from you today. But for now, you press play on the one thing mapping the miss the difference and org chart makes for your church.
00:01:10:19 – 00:01:32:04
Speaker 2
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00:01:32:06 – 00:01:44:04
Speaker 2
To learn more and book a free consultation. Is it SDA accommodate you? That’s ex dia accommodate you. And now back to the podcast.
00:01:44:06 – 00:01:57:16
Scott Sanders
Now. Chris, a lot of people might not know this, but you are a new parent. I’m trying to get a sense of what the sort of play area in your house looks like. Is it a is it is it an ordered mess or is it, is it just a mess most of the time in between.
00:01:57:21 – 00:02:05:18
Christ Rhooleht
It’s a mess during the day. A bit of a reset at the not at not time. He, he’s starting to crawl, so it’s getting. I think this weekend is baby proofing.
00:02:05:18 – 00:02:07:06
Scott Sanders
Time proofing. I can yeah.
00:02:07:08 – 00:02:09:02
Christ Rhooleht
I don’t know what I’m doing, but we’ll have to get rid of.
00:02:09:02 – 00:02:11:23
Scott Sanders
So I look for hard edges. Make sure you got soft floor mats.
00:02:11:24 – 00:02:12:08
Christ Rhooleht
Thank you.
00:02:12:11 – 00:02:17:02
Scott Sanders
This is what the forecast is. And then also just be okay with, you know, a little bit a mess every now and again.
00:02:17:05 – 00:02:17:15
Christ Rhooleht
Thank you.
00:02:17:22 – 00:02:28:13
Scott Sanders
Yeah. Well, good stuff. And I recommend first time parents also get a dog. Because you don’t have to clean up underneath, you know, underneath the, the food service area.
00:02:28:15 – 00:02:32:20
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah, I think that’s a nonstarter for us, but. So. Yeah.
00:02:32:22 – 00:02:48:06
Scott Sanders
So, Chris, we’re pushing into all chats that I want to get a sense of, where where a network that is driven by, convictions. Why are you convicted about the importance of an org chart of all things or church?
00:02:48:08 – 00:03:10:03
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. I mean, there’s a few places that your mind goes in Scripture. There’s there’s Jethro is advice to Moses and Moses breaking things up, but that wasn’t really Moses creating an old chart on tablets or papyrus or whatever he might have done. It was it was more a structure. My mind’s gone to one, Peter, for thinking about stewardship with respect to gifts and serving others.
00:03:10:05 – 00:03:33:13
Christ Rhooleht
So that’s all there. Loving people, helping people to use their gifts. I think actually, where I’ve really landed is just human finitude, human limited ness that we are created, we’re creatures and, limited in, in two senses when it comes to all charts. We just can’t keep all of this in our heads after a certain period of time or a certain size of church.
00:03:33:15 – 00:03:48:07
Christ Rhooleht
And, and if we think that we can, I think sometimes maybe we’re kidding ourselves, I know sometimes I have been in ministry where I’ve thought, yeah, I’ve got a good handle on this, and I can say it all, and it’s all there before me. But actually, I can’t. I’m not God, I can’t see everything.
00:03:48:09 – 00:04:05:10
Scott Sanders
And but also, there’s a sense that, as a church grows, even as a ministry area or portfolio in a church, in church life grows and is there’s more leaders, there’s more people that you’re seeking to, care for. It’s just helps to have something on paper so you can actually see that, and see that with other people as well.
00:04:05:14 – 00:04:14:19
Scott Sanders
Yeah. Because again, as you said, lots of it’s in your head. And some people have greater capacity to kind of manage the, you know, manage the mess or manage the ambiguity. Yeah, but most people do have a limit.
00:04:14:21 – 00:04:31:12
Christ Rhooleht
And we’re also limited in how many things we can actually be responsible for. And I think that’s one of the big things we we assume that we are in the responsible for, say, six things, but when we get it on paper, there’s actually 20 things that we’re responsible for or the people that we’re serving. We’re loading them up with all sorts of responsibilities that are too much for them.
00:04:31:17 – 00:04:48:20
Scott Sanders
Now the the other thing I’ve often seen is, you know, there are a number of people who love these sorts of things. And so I put I put them down and then and then that becomes kind of this rubric, this guiding principle, you know. No, no, it’s not it’s not here. So therefore it’s not happening. The reality is that our churches, there’s lots of stuff kind of always happening.
00:04:48:20 – 00:04:59:15
Scott Sanders
So, an org chart, it it isn’t your structure and it isn’t your people. It’s just a it’s just a picture. It’s just a tool. Can you speak into, into that.
00:04:59:20 – 00:05:15:12
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. So the org structure isn’t your structure. It’s it’s representing what your structure is. It’s just getting it visually down so that people can see it. I think the other thing to say about org structures as a tool is that that is what they are. They’re just a tool. And you can fall off the horse both sides.
00:05:15:12 – 00:05:34:04
Christ Rhooleht
You can completely embrace it and make your whole life and ministry about this thing. And yet you sit in front of it all the time. And that’s the obsession. But you miss people. You can fall off the other side too, and just completely retreat and and oppose that sort of a tool because it feels too corporate or it feels too structured or it doesn’t feel relational enough.
00:05:34:04 – 00:05:37:16
Christ Rhooleht
I’d say when it’s used well, it can actually help you to love people. Well.
00:05:37:18 – 00:05:53:12
Scott Sanders
Now, Chris, you’re coordinating a consult, process and consult team for, for the network. So it it doesn’t cost, I think, you know, 60 or 70 consults annually. What are you seeing? What are the problems, that you’re seeing with org charts?
00:05:53:14 – 00:06:14:12
Christ Rhooleht
I think one of the things is just it ends up in the too hard basket. It’s. And it’s hard for a few reasons. Church is complex, as you’ve said. It’s difficult to actually get down in one place. How is this whole thing structured and what are all the connecting pieces? Who reports to who, so to speak? Who’s responsible for who?
00:06:14:14 – 00:06:39:07
Christ Rhooleht
And and it’s just overwhelming. So it ends up being that important but not urgent category. But the thing that we’re saying is that, when people start to do an org chart and actually start to get it on paper, they’re saying some really interesting things. So there’s a church that we’re working with in Tasmania, and, the pastor there did an old chart coming out of at the back of one of our programs and started to realize his name was everywhere.
00:06:39:09 – 00:06:42:02
Christ Rhooleht
Another church in Queensland. That that is.
00:06:42:06 – 00:06:49:24
Scott Sanders
What’s wrong with that? That’s why we pay our, you know, senior leaders to get ministry done. What’s the problem with a senior minister being in everything?
00:06:49:24 – 00:07:08:14
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah, well, coming back to our human finitude, I created this, work that just creates a cap on how many people can be loved and cared for. And it also puts a cap on how much the giftedness of the body of Christ can be released. And so what we’re wanting to do is, is help mobilize the whole body of Christ, not just a few chosen individuals.
00:07:08:14 – 00:07:10:17
Christ Rhooleht
I think that’s the role of the pastor.
00:07:10:17 – 00:07:13:18
Scott Sanders
So where else where else are you seeing?
00:07:13:20 – 00:07:32:05
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. So we’re seeing, in, you know, church in Victoria that we worked with, they realized that there was a significant area related to discipleship of their people, specifically the serve area. How are we mobilizing people to serve? And when they all charted it out, they realized that there were three peoples names who all thought each other were in charge of that.
00:07:32:07 – 00:07:50:22
Christ Rhooleht
And and going through that process and having that conversation together realized that it helped them to realize they were all responsible, which really meant no one was responsible. And it showed. They realized that the serve area had been really neglected in their church, and it helped them to figure out that we need to help make someone responsible, and then we need to invest in this area.
00:07:50:24 – 00:08:14:17
Scott Sanders
So you’ve raised two issues the span of care question just person a person’s load and capacity. Yeah. Often what we see you’re saying is, church leaders doing too much and particularly senior minister doing too much and being involved too much in a, in a ministry that can also go for, an individual staff member who, you know, once you kind of map it out, you can actually see they’re actually involved in too many areas.
00:08:14:19 – 00:08:34:21
Scott Sanders
The second issue arise, there is just a lack of clarity about, who is responsible. How can you see, I guess, decision making rights and, you know, so responsibilities is a, you know, is one of those areas. But then the question of then how do we actually, you know, decide who makes the call and who makes a decision.
00:08:35:00 – 00:08:46:16
Scott Sanders
Is that is that loading up too much for an org chart, or is that something that can also be identified and seen as you map out, you know, where and who and and what in a in a church structure?
00:08:46:18 – 00:09:09:24
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. I think it can help you to figure that out. I think it can help facilitate those conversations. And it really depends how much heavy lifting you want the org chart to do. And do you want it to really clearly depict where those decision making rights fit? Or is that some other place that that’s represented? I think what is helpful about it, is it can help the team just see it.
00:09:09:24 – 00:09:27:09
Christ Rhooleht
Something about it being visual. You could do it. I oversaw the serve area in the church that I’m at. For a while we we had a big spreadsheet. That’s how it worked. It was somewhat visual, but it was quite hard for the team to engage with. As soon as I put it into a visual format, people could see the links that were able to engage with it more.
00:09:27:09 – 00:09:39:09
Christ Rhooleht
And so it means those discussions as a team become more fruitful and, more deliberate and more precise, because you actually know what you’re working with when you are having that decision making rights conversation.
00:09:39:15 – 00:09:55:24
Scott Sanders
Now, I feel like where you’re pushing for in the one thing is going to be guys doing a good job of actually and actually visualize it. But but one of the things I’m thinking is often, you know, you see that box, you know, let’s just say, you know, it’s the server in church or you’re looking after small groups.
00:09:56:01 – 00:10:14:08
Scott Sanders
Or, you know, all the deep in the deep in word outcome. How does an org chart, you know, for to actually show the real work like there, you know, you know, put a box in. Okay. Chris is responsible for serve, at cornerstone and you go, okay, cool. We’ve got the box there, but it doesn’t really encapsulate all that’s involved in that.
00:10:14:10 – 00:10:22:10
Scott Sanders
How does an old chat help you think about work load and size of ministry, you know? Yeah. Is it as simple as putting a bigger box?
00:10:22:12 – 00:10:23:12
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:23:14 – 00:10:26:00
Scott Sanders
Bigger square or a circle or something. Yeah.
00:10:26:01 – 00:10:46:00
Christ Rhooleht
I mean you can there are all sorts of ways that you can visualize it. So it could be that I think where that, that really helps is the layers of leadership underneath each person. So you could have a high level responsibility chart for your staff, let’s say a larger staff team, and just show who’s responsible for each key area.
00:10:46:02 – 00:11:02:16
Christ Rhooleht
I think where this becomes really helpful is the the further down you can drill down, you can start to say, how many people is this person actually responsible for? A they responsible for three people in their team, or are they responsible for 60 people in the team? And we’re obviously not talking full staff here at this point.
00:11:02:16 – 00:11:29:23
Christ Rhooleht
We’re talking anyone who’s serving in church. And so it can help you to see, how loaded up is this person. You can say, okay, this person has four roles where they’re overseeing 20 people in each of those roles. If we don’t identify that now, in six months time, they’re probably going to inevitably drop the ball on something because they’re working full time and they’re a parent and and they’re very willing to serve.
00:11:30:00 – 00:11:49:21
Christ Rhooleht
They’re a yes man, a woman. And they they’re very, very willing. And but we actually need to care for them. And this is, this is where we see it really helping people in the network when they start to do this, it’s a tool to help them love people. It’s a tool to help them to see and anticipate problems and say, how can we get ahead of what might break down the down the track or who might break it down the track?
00:11:49:23 – 00:12:11:12
Scott Sanders
So what I’m what I’m picturing is there’s a there’s a biological track that shows those big picture functions and responsibilities and ministry loads. But then each ministry area should also do the how to work of mapping out even further. You know, in breaking up who’s responsible, you know, who’s reporting into who, what extra ministries are doing.
00:12:11:14 – 00:12:28:21
Scott Sanders
This sounds like a really complex task. Like I’m struggling to use Excel. You know, is there like. Yeah, I’d be just like, I’d just like to whiteboard this and then I can rub stuff out. But what does it actually look like to put this down on, on paper? How do I actually do that if I’m wanting to go about.
00:12:28:23 – 00:12:47:02
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. The the short answer is do whatever works for you. The longer answer is I think there are some tools that help you to do it a little bit more than others. One of the barriers is just the formatting. And if you’re using, say, Canva or you’re using Google Slides and you’ve got all these boxes, but then you’ve got to add something.
00:12:47:02 – 00:13:05:15
Christ Rhooleht
And so you got to, you know, select all the things and drag them all. You missed one. And suddenly it’s all messy. Two tools that I’ve found quite helpful. Miro is a free online platform, and Lucid Chat is, a paid platform, but has quite a lot of functionality. We’ve been using that at our church and some churches in the network.
00:13:05:15 – 00:13:26:11
Christ Rhooleht
It can help visualize different leadership layers. So who do we need to train to be leaders in our org chart? It can help visualize here some needs and it can help your team then to keep track of those needs as they’re talking with people about serving and have those front of mind, but also to pray, it helps your team to be able to pray purposefully for those needs and then celebrate when you see God answering those prayers.
00:13:26:13 – 00:13:43:01
Scott Sanders
So there are some tools are going to actually help with the the chatting side of things. But then I’m coming to it and going, okay, you know, how do I do it? Do I structure it around, people? Do I structure around, you know, roles and functions in church life? How do I put this down?
00:13:43:05 – 00:13:45:01
Scott Sanders
You know, where do I start?
00:13:45:03 – 00:14:07:13
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. Great question. I, I think start from, just start from the top and worked in or stopped from the bottom. Work out what whatever gets you in. Just just started. And I would definitely organize it by roles rather than people. So you could try and have, a person and, and depict all the links to that individual person and have lines going every which way.
00:14:07:15 – 00:14:30:07
Christ Rhooleht
That doesn’t usually end up being all that meaningful for conversations, structuring it around roles where someone’s name might appear six, seven, eight times across your old chart, but in different roles actually helps you to see what’s the load that people are carrying. The important thing to say. So you could separate it out into all your different ministry areas and say to everyone, make an org chart for your area.
00:14:30:07 – 00:14:52:07
Christ Rhooleht
In a larger church, inevitably you’re probably going to have to do that. One of the dangers with that is there are ministries in your church that might not be accounted for in your old chart, so I think you can get 80% of the way there pretty quick, and you have a sense of what’s going on. But as you drill down and show more people, you start to realize, oh, there’s all these other things that we do and we don’t actually know quite where they fit.
00:14:52:09 – 00:15:03:03
Christ Rhooleht
That’s also part of the benefit of this exercise. You can see, everything in your church and make sure you know what purpose it is, what outcome it’s driving towards, and who’s ultimately responsible for that.
00:15:03:05 – 00:15:24:21
Scott Sanders
So it sounds like it’s a bit of a dance in terms of giving some responsibility to, you know, functions and ministries in the church to kind of map it out. They might have a bigger space. I’m thinking particularly like kids ministry or a welcoming ministry. We’ve got significant amounts of, you know, people involved on a Sunday.
00:15:24:23 – 00:15:57:00
Scott Sanders
But that then conversation needs to be fed back up to the to the larger conversation. The 80%, you know, right piece. What what they seem like had conversations. But I say more important conversations. What advice can you give to a church leader? When, you know, in having those? Because presumably, you know, I’m thinking about the church in Tasmania where the senior minister had that kind of moment of, I mean, lots of things, there’s lots going on for a leader as, as they probably have that conversation with, with their church and their family.
00:15:57:02 – 00:16:11:11
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. I think one thing to say is it doesn’t necessarily need to be the senior leader who drives this process. You could give it away to someone. And I think it was a church that we were working with in Victoria that did that. They it was just not how they worked, but they saw the value in it.
00:16:11:15 – 00:16:36:08
Christ Rhooleht
They gave it to someone who really gelled with this. And so they did it. They liaised with all the leaders. It was really empowering for them. How it helps, a church in Queensland that we’ve worked with, they present the old chart to their senior leaders once a quarter, and it helps them to identify where the gaps identify, where where have we not allocated enough people resources, to align with our vision and where are we going?
00:16:36:10 – 00:16:56:22
Christ Rhooleht
So a church realized that they, had allocated too much to the music ministry that had a lot of musos, but realized that their mission team was really just one person. And then they started to look at how many people have we seen become Christians in the last year, come to our evangelistic course? And it was very minimal because they didn’t have a team driving it.
00:16:57:02 – 00:17:09:20
Christ Rhooleht
So when you put it before people, you can start to make strategic decisions. You can start to diagnose issues. You can start to praise God for when you see those, needs met and see people step into new, layers of leadership and responsibility.
00:17:09:20 – 00:17:30:14
Scott Sanders
So now we’re doing more than just documenting what is now. We’re actually using it as a planning tool, as a diagnostic tool to get a sense of where do we actually need to put more needs, where, where areas under resourced, how can you use it for, how can you use an org chart for, say, a 3 to 5 year, you know, horizon?
00:17:30:16 – 00:17:34:03
Scott Sanders
How can it be used as a, as a even more future planning tool?
00:17:34:05 – 00:17:52:18
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. There’s a church that we worked with in South Australia recently that was thinking about planting a church. And for them, this was really useful because they didn’t need to mess with their church database that had all of the serving roles in there to plan for what might come in a year’s time. They created their current org chart.
00:17:52:23 – 00:18:15:16
Christ Rhooleht
They created then two more, one for the church. They’re going to plant and send 40 people, and also the church that those 40 people are leaving. And I think it’s going to stay and need to be completely restructure. And as they did that, it helped them to say, is this even doable? Do we need to simplify the home church, the sending church, in order to send out and rebuild?
00:18:15:18 – 00:18:38:03
Christ Rhooleht
And they just wouldn’t have been able to really do that. They kind of would have been going in blind, would have sent a whole bunch of people and probably had a good sense because they love their people and they switched on and everything. But there was some really key things that they identified. We need this person, or we need this person to stay at the sending church because, if all of our kids ladies leave, then our sending church isn’t going to be set up.
00:18:38:03 – 00:18:54:23
Christ Rhooleht
Well, that’s just one example, but there are many examples of ways that it can help you to look down the track and and especially to anticipate problems. So to think about if we moved to two services, what would that look like? How’s it going to work if we split? At what point then should we move to two services, all those sorts of.
00:18:54:23 – 00:19:11:02
Scott Sanders
Questions, and I’m hearing you saying, be quite detailed about putting down names of people, you know. So in that, in that conversation, an example, are you going to actually. Yeah, we are going to have to send that question. Do we really want to send that? Chris? You know, he’s actually doing a lot here. So you can have those conversations with people.
00:19:11:04 – 00:19:34:08
Scott Sanders
And, and, and actually help, help, disciple them either into leaving. Well, or start actually helping them think about, well, how do I replace myself? How do we start the swapping and raising up the, you know, the next group of people? God willing, hopefully we can we can have the optimism and say, actually, we’ve got this whole group of people in church who can now be raised up and lifted up, and moved into that.
00:19:34:08 – 00:19:54:15
Scott Sanders
And I’ve seen that I’ve seen that work really well in a number of, church based situations where it actually has meant the sending churches has become almost, you know, stronger, in the leaving because it’s actually force them to work on a lot of those systems and those issues as well. Someone might be listening to this and thinking, this is just really a big church thing.
00:19:54:17 – 00:20:08:22
Scott Sanders
You know, in a small church, I don’t really need to do it because I’ve only got 100 people. I know where, you know, the bodies are buried. I know where people are, you know, working and serving. What would you say to that person?
00:20:08:24 – 00:20:29:22
Christ Rhooleht
I’d say prove it. Now prove it by making the org chart. And tell me that you had all of that in your head. And some people can. Some people really can, and that’s okay. But I really think it’s the rare case that you wouldn’t have missed something if you didn’t put it down on paper. The other thing I’d say is, why?
00:20:29:22 – 00:20:49:00
Christ Rhooleht
Why would you have that all in your head when you can put it on paper, or on a screen? And also then to help communicate that to other people in your team. So, I think a smaller church. Absolutely. In fact, it’s easier to do it when you’re a smaller church before you get big, so that then it’s less of a huge task as you get down the road.
00:20:49:02 – 00:21:07:06
Scott Sanders
Yep. Now, if you’re wanting to nerd out on this just a little bit, a little bit more for those people like you sort of running down, you know, running down lines, I think one of the other kind of wrestles with sort of org structures that you can say as well as you do map it out is you can get a sense of kind of how you’re wired and, your personality as a leader.
00:21:07:08 – 00:21:25:09
Scott Sanders
So I think, you know, often kind of looking back and reflecting on a lot of org charts, you can actually see how, you know, your gifts and strengths, you know, where to you as a leader, you know, put yourself and insert yourself into the org chart that can give you a sense of what you’re gifted at, or at least what you enjoy, enjoy doing.
00:21:25:11 – 00:21:47:10
Scott Sanders
Potentially. But you can see some of the different types. So are you quite hierarchical? You know, do you have, you know, quite a flat structure? We’ve got number of churches using, you know, matrix systems as well, which, which require greater meetings and, you know, create tension and conflict. So are you a leader that, you know, is, you know, enjoys that often?
00:21:47:10 – 00:22:07:24
Scott Sanders
Your, your, org structure can actually, you know, demonstrate, and show that. But again, there’s those capacity issues as well that you’ve highlighted as well. There are some leaders who just have a great capacity and they can, you know, manage, you know, five, six, seven people. There are others who don’t have that, capacity. So you can actually say how you can disciple and grow people.
00:22:08:01 – 00:22:29:13
Scott Sanders
But also you can also get a sense of your own, you know, your own limits and as you say, finitude, your own, creature likeness as well. Chris, you’ve talked about a couple of tools that can help chart these things out. But don’t databases do this already? Like, have we kind of moved moved ahead in the whole database landscape where you can create teams and put people in groups.
00:22:29:13 – 00:22:36:21
Scott Sanders
And so therefore don’t you just hit a button in the database and it just magically, magically appears? Isn’t that what I see? Isn’t it isn’t that how the world works?
00:22:36:22 – 00:22:58:02
Christ Rhooleht
Isn’t that what you signed up for when you bought it? Yeah. I think it’s a real issue, double handling of the data to have two separate systems. I love the idea that there would be one church management system that perfectly. Org charted this out and did that, and any church management systems designers out there who want to build this functionality in, please go for it.
00:22:58:02 – 00:23:17:14
Christ Rhooleht
It would be amazing. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be something that does it to quite the level of detail that is useful. So you do need to do something separate. So some churches and some leaders have the ability to keep two things synchronized and have you you management system for Sundays all sorted. And that reflecting your old chart.
00:23:17:16 – 00:23:34:24
Christ Rhooleht
Most don’t and it’s not really worth the time. So some churches would do it quarterly. They’ll do it annually for their annual planning rhythms really to help their team get visibility on what’s going on. Or they might just have that themselves to do the diagnosis, or maybe they’d go down to a certain layer of leadership for that.
00:23:34:24 – 00:23:40:20
Christ Rhooleht
So there’s options there. Whatever you feel like is going to work for you. But it is it is a challenge. And you do need to keep that in mind.
00:23:40:22 – 00:24:02:00
Scott Sanders
One of the other, shall I say often, is that people put, just just a job, a job, you know, small groups and not an outcome area. In an org chart, you know, so they’ve identified a function that takes place, in the church, and they’ve given that person that job in that task to do. And that’s kind of how it sits in an old chart.
00:24:02:02 – 00:24:14:16
Scott Sanders
Can you talk to the, the, I guess the, the, the importance of potentially putting in an outcome area in an org structure and not just a task or a function?
00:24:14:18 – 00:24:39:19
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. I think one of the reasons that’s really important is it helps you to place ministries under those outcome areas and know exactly what the purpose of those ministries are and where they fit into the broader ecosystem of church. And because if you don’t do that, you just have a whole bunch of different things that happen. And everyone’s answerable to, say, the senior leader or the elders or, the senior leaders or staff or whoever it is.
00:24:39:21 – 00:25:08:01
Christ Rhooleht
But but there’s not a lot of clarity on why this ministry even exists. So I think being able to have clarity on what are the key discipleship outcomes that we’re going for as a church and praying and working towards seeing you, our people and then looking at every ministry and saying, where does this fit? Which area does this fit underneath, and if you can’t find an area for it to sit underneath, that probably raises a question of whether you should be actually doing this in the first place or not, and whether some change management needs to happen there to wind up a ministry.
00:25:08:03 – 00:25:17:13
Scott Sanders
Well, Chris, this has been a really, helpful discussion. What’s the one thing you want to say, about managing the mis and org charts?
00:25:17:15 – 00:25:43:04
Christ Rhooleht
I think all org charts turn the lights on. I help you to see the needs that you need to pray for. They help you to say the provision that you need praise God for. They help you to see what’s not working that needs fixing. Who’s being overloaded that needs to be loved. They just help you to see what is actually going on and help you to be able to plan, and to manage that mess that often church can be and and beautifully.
00:25:43:04 – 00:25:52:12
Christ Rhooleht
So what a beautiful mess church is. What a beautiful bride of Christ we’re part of. And, and this is just a way that we can help love the bride of Christ.
00:25:52:14 – 00:26:06:19
Scott Sanders
Now, if a church is listening to this and they’re thinking, this is going to be too hard for me, I just love, someone from Australia to come and help me work this out. How might they, you know, get in contact with you to look into an org chart for their church?
00:26:06:21 – 00:26:17:22
Christ Rhooleht
Yeah. Feel free to reach out through the contact us page of the Radio Australia website. We have some templates for some of these things that we’re happy to share and, happy to have a conversation.
00:26:17:24 – 00:26:36:17
Scott Sanders
Excellent. Well, really good to have you on the one thing today. I’m just gonna open up the toolbox. We’re going to put links to, to Miro and, and lucid. I’ve used lucid as a tool, so it is actually, quite easy, but it does have a, a paywall. But you can just use really simply, you know, PowerPoint, Google spreadsheet, all those sorts of things as well.
00:26:36:22 – 00:26:51:22
Scott Sanders
We might say we might put a couple of examples, in the show notes as well. Yeah. Because I often find it so easy just to grab what someone else has done and, you know, and miss and, and play around with that as well. I think this is, this is, it is also raised a question of decision making rights.
00:26:51:24 – 00:27:10:17
Scott Sanders
And, and I’ll put a few links in the show notes to some episodes on decision making rights, because one of the things, that, you know, once you document this, it actually does help you think, okay, there is a lack of clarity there. So actually, how do we, you know, be more clear on on decision making rights and who’s, who’s responsible and our decisions made.
00:27:10:19 – 00:27:31:14
Scott Sanders
And then lastly, I benefit lots from the Unstack group on, on this. And so I’ll just put a link to, a blog post from the unstuck group on on, org charts that I found, you know, really helpful just to sort of prod and ask questions, in this space. Well, if you think this episode is helpful, we’d love you to pass it around.
00:27:31:14 – 00:27:47:03
Scott Sanders
Share it with other, team members. If if you think this is near your church, do it carefully. Would you say you minister, you know, want to have a conversation to say, hey, let’s, you know, let’s map out, map out least, and let’s do this together. This would be really useful thing to do in your next, planning cycle.
00:27:47:05 – 00:27:49:17
Scott Sanders
I’m Scott Sanders chat. So.
